AN ALTERNATIVE CONSTITUTION FOR THE EUROPEAN
UNION:
THE LATIN SAINTS OF THE ORTHODOX PATRIARCHATE OF ROME

'What
a good sign that some Westerners are turning to Orthodoxy. The fact that
some are also venerating the saints that lived in the West before the
Catholic Schism shows how the Holy Spirit is enlightening them to go back
to where they left. The West was with the Orthodox Church until all Seven
Oecumenical Councils had taken place. Both Orthodox and Catholics are
guilty for the Schism, because both lacked love for each other, but at
least the Orthodox kept the Faith. The Schism was the work of Satan, because
if we had not been separated, the Christian witness to the world would
have been titanic, and the devil would not have turned us to all the things
of today'.

Words
spoken on 24 July/6 August 2003 by Fr Dionyius (Ignat) of Colciu Skete
on the Holy Mountain. Aged 94, Fr Dionysius has been an Athonite monk
since 1926.

FOREWORD

In
2004 the European Union will introduce its first Constitution, which from
May 2004 will apply to twenty-five European countries. This has been widely,
and quite rightly, criticised, throughout the Orthodox and Non-Orthodox
world, for its utter neglect of the Orthodox Christian foundations of
Europe. On the eve of 2004, we are therefore proposing an Alternative
Constitution for the European Union. It is a Constitution of the Saints,
a Constitution based on the only true Unity that Europe, East and West,
has ever experienced, Spiritual Unity, Unity in Christ. Unlike the secular,
humanistic Constitution to be adopted in 2004, this Constitution is about
the Re-rooting and therefore Re-routing of Europe, the Reintegration of
Latin Europe into the Church after a thousand years of erring.

INTRODUCTION

For
centuries many of the greatest Saints of the Latin Orthodox world have
been included in Greek, Arabic, Georgian, Slavic and Romanian Orthodox
calendars in the multicultural Orthodox world. Here they have been much
venerated, although sometimes on different dates from the Latin West.

Thus
St Agnes, St Agrippina, St Alexis, St Anastasia, St Sophia and her three
children, St Tatiana of Rome, St Agatha of Catania and St Lucy of Syracuse
have always been loved by all Orthodox. St Irenaeus of Lyons, St Julian
of Le Mans (Cenomansis, 'Kenomaniysky' in Slavonic), St Cyprian of Carthage,
St Hilary of Poitiers ('The Western Athanasius'), St Ambrose of Milan,
Blessed Jerome of Stridon and Augustine of Hippo, St Martin of Tours,
St John Cassian and St Benedict of Nursia have always been honoured as
Church Fathers or writers. St Leo the Great, St Gregory the Great (called
'The Dialogist', to whom is attributed the Liturgy of the Presanctified
Gifts), St Martin I and many other Roman Popes, so many of whom were Greek
or Syrian, have always been revered by all Orthodox. Nevertheless, because
in the eleventh century the Western lands separated from the Church, falling
under the sway of an organisation founded on the ruins of pagan Rome,
these Saints represent only the tip of an iceberg of Latin holiness, which
remains largely unknown in the rest of the Orthodox world.

The
task of restoring all the Saints of the Latin Orthodox world to Orthodox
calendars was begun in 1975 for personal use. At that time we also set
about including the names of at least some of the New Martyrs and Confessors
of Eastern Europe and Russia. They had then still not been canonised,
even by the free part of the Russian Church, the Church Outside Russia.
Today the situation is quite different within both the Russian and Serbian
Churches, now politically free, who have glorified many of their saints
within their own homelands. However, the situation with Latin Orthodoxy
is still deficient.

In
the 1970's, under the direct influence of St John the Wonderworker (at
that time also still not canonised for political reasons), in the English-speaking
world only the monastery at Platina in California and Fr Mark (Meyrick)
in Walsingham in England were issuing calendars, including at least some
saints of the Latin Orthodox world. At Platina, under the influence of
the ever-memorable Fr Seraphim Rose, certain Latin saints were included
in their St Herman calendar. At Walsingham in England the ever-memorable
Fr Mark (later David) was also inserting some Latin saints, though nearly
all Celts, into the St Seraphim calendar (which is no longer published).
Since then an Old Calendarist group in Austin, Texas has published an
Eastern-Western combined calendar under Western-rite influence. Nevertheless,
there has until now nowhere been any listing of Latin Orthodox Saints
with some basic details of their lives.

Thus
we are now continuing and expanding on the three editions of our work,
'The Hallowing of England' published in 1994. We are making use of our
articles on Orthodox Iberia (published in 'Orthodox England', Vols 2.2
and 2.3 ). And we are also using articles such as 'Towards the Orthodox
Calendar' or 'Towards a World Calendar', published in our 1999 book 'The
Lighted Way', in order to present on the Internet a listing of the Saints
of the Latin Orthodox world.

LATIN
ORTHODOXY

We
use the term 'Latin Orthodox', since the term 'Western Orthodox' is too
confined geographically. It also has connotations of 'Western-rite'. Even
the term 'Western European Orthodox' is insufficient. We use the term
'Latin Orthodox', because the term includes all those holy ones who were
part of the Roman Patriarchate. This includes all those who used Latin
as a liturgical language, from the Atlantic Celts to the Scandinavian
Norse, from the Germanic peoples to the Latin peoples, from Eastern and
Central Europe to North-West Africa.

The
latter have been particularly neglected. Only the ever-memorable Bishop
Nathanael in his reports in 1953 and 1954 to St John the Wonderworker,
wrote to any extent about the saints of Latin (North-West) Africa, as
opposed to Greek (North-East) Africa, who were centred around the Patriarchate
of Alexandria. We should not forget that the native peoples of North-West
Africa, the Berbers and their descendants the Kabyls, spoke Latin, not
only before the Muslim invasions, but right up until the twelfth century.
The best-known representative of Latin Africa, Blessed Augustine of Hippo,
was himself a Berber. Even today members of my family who have lived in
North Africa and also Kabyl friends, assure me that one of the most common
motifs in Kabyl folk-art is still the cross.

Our
task here then is to present a catalogue of Latin Orthodox saints, from
North-West Africa to the Canary Islands, from Ireland to the Hebrides,
from Scandinavia to Poland, from Czechia to Hungary, from Dalmatia to
Istria, from Sicily to Malta and all the lands inbetween, including all
the lands which then did not exist and were known by different names from
those today.

SOURCES

The
sources for the insertion of the Saints of Latin Orthodoxy are varied.
They are not of course Protestant, since the concepts of 'saints' and
even 'holiness' do not as such exist in Protestantism. Even in Anglicanism,
there is no definition of holiness and the individuals whom Anglicans
put forward for consideration as 'saints' are generally not saints, but
social workers and reformers like Florence Nightingale or Dr Barnardo.
There one finds great confusion between the emotional, the psychic and
the spiritual.

On
the other hand, we freely acknowledge our debt to Roman Catholicism. It
is Roman Catholicism which for over 900 years has been the depository
for the heritage of the Latin West. First of all there are the fundamental
learned hagiographical works of the Bollandists on the primary sources,
then the secondary Catholic Encyclopedias in various editions and in various
languages. To these can be added the works of authors like Alban Butler
and Herbert Thurston and more recently David Farmer (The Oxford Dictionary
of Saints) in English. We also have to recall the various editions of
'The Book of Saints', published by the Benedictines of Ramsgate in England,
to which we owe a large debt of presentation, having first discovered
an old edition at the Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1975. However, the
most detailed accessible work is undoubtedly the 13 huge volumes, twelve
monthly volumes (Menologia) and an Index Volume, of the Benedictines of
Paris published by Letouzey and Ane between 1935 and 1958.

However,
the problem with Catholic hagiography has always been its inability to
preserve, let alone conserve, the heritage of Latin Orthodoxy intact.
Even before the eleventh century, mythical and romanced details were being
inserted into the Lives of some Saints. This trend accelerated rapidly
during the Middle Ages with the production of such 'novels' as 'The Golden
Legend'. The reason for this was simply because so many of the Saints
of the early Latin world had lived in pre-literate societies. Lives were
therefore invented several hundred years after the deeds described, often
for purely financial reasons. A second problem is that the whole of the
Orthodox First Millennium of Latin Orthodoxy came to be seen through the
ideology of Papism. The Lives of many early Latin Saints, especially those
of the Popes if Rome, were distorted by the pietism, ideology and philosophy
of the Roman Catholic Middle Ages and Counter-Reformation.

A
further layer of difficulties arose during the late twentieth century.
At that time, under modernising and Protestantising pressures, the Second
Vatican Council proceeded to eliminate a large number of saints from the
Roman Catholic calendar for whom fictitious Lives had been written. The
error here was to claim that a Saint had never existed, just because the
Saint did not have a factual Life. However, this rationalisation went
even further, hitting the depths of practical atheism. The Vatican actually
even began denying the existence of many Saints, including those outside
the Latin world and many universal Saints. This came to a head in 1969
with the official revision of the Roman Catholic calendar.

This
approach can be termed the 'ABC approach', since it put into doubt the
mere existence of such great Saints as St Alexis, St Barbara and St Catherine.
Every Orthodox knows from experience that such saints exist, because they
answer our prayers and have been seen by more recent saints, such as St
Seraphim of Sarov. To forget your ABC, not to be even at the first letter
of the alphabet, is about as near to apostasy as one can come. All we
can say is that this trend did not always reach the ordinary Roman Catholic
people who remained more faithful to the Orthodox heritage of the Latin
world than their elite. With this official apostasy in mind, it seems
clear to us that the Orthodox Church alone is now able to step forward
to preserve, and also conserve in living form, the heritage of Latin Orthodoxy.

CRITERIA

The
main criterion for the selection of Latin Saints has to be the date of
1054. Of course, we are sufficiently well-read in history to know that
that date has only a symbolic significance, since initially it was the
date when the Patriarch of Constantinople was excommunicated by the Pope
of Rome for being Orthodox. Nevertheless, though not dogmatic, the date
is practical and convenient. Everybody agrees that the Latin West fell
away from the Church during the eleventh century, which was not an event,
but a process. And everybody would also agree that the first signs of
this Schism are clearly visible as early as the end of the eighth century
with the Carolingians. However, that Empire failed and the end of the
tenth century saw a great many Greek monks and churchmen in Germany, with
the Greek Empress Theophano. Again, it is quite clear that there were
many contacts between the Orthodox West and the Orthodox East even into
the early eleventh century, thus delaying the falling away of the West.

Inevitably,
therefore, it is actually impossible to give a precise date for the Western
Schism, thus the convenience of the 1054 date. It is notable that in recent
years various knowledgeable Orthodox bishops living in Western Europe
have given their blessing for the veneration of Latin Saints who lived
before the mid-eleventh century. St Genevieve of Paris and St Edward the
Martyr are good examples. Moreover, they have given their blessing for
the veneration of Saints and the relics of those who lived right up until
the first half of the eleventh century - among them, St Olav of Norway
or Sts Alphege and Brihtwald of Canterbury. Indeed icons have been painted
of these saints, services composed and, in the case of St Olav, in 2003
a church was consecrated.

However,
it is also true that we have excluded from the present listing some who
lived well before this date of 1054 and included some who lived after.
For example, we have naturally excluded from our listing filioquists like
'Blessed' Charlemagne, 'St' Paulinus of Aquilea or 'St' Nicholas I, Pope
of Rome. We have had to exclude these and those linked with them, for
the simple reason that they were all 'Orthodoxomachists', people who denied
and struggled against Orthodox Christianity. On the other hand, we have
included in our list those Greeks of Sicily and Calabria who well after
the 1054 date continued to live as Orthodox, in communion with the rest
of the Orthodox Church, right up until the 13th century and beyond, until
they too, like the 14th century opponent of St Gregory Palamas, Barlaam
of Calabria, were infected by the Western disease.

We
do not wish in any way to suggest that our listing is definitive. There
may be figures whom we have wrongly excluded. We ask the Church to decide
over the coming years and will adapt the listing in accord with Church
consciousness. Like all our work, we do it not to promote some personal
viewpoint, but only because no-one else is doing that which is both necessary
and inevitable, as the spiritually sensitive in Western lands return to
the Church of Christ.

TYPES
OF SAINTS

All
the saints included here are presented with four basic facts about them.
Firstly each has a name (sometimes in different forms), each has a feast-day
or days, each has the date when he/she lived and reposed and finally to
each is attributed a modern country or region (or countries), on the territory
of which they lived. It will soon become apparent that these saints often
lived in more than one country or region, for people of that age travelled
far more than we realise. Indeed, readers will soon see that many of the
saints of the Latin West, including many Popes of Rome, were Eastern in
origin, but travelled and were hallowed in the West. The stream of Orthodox
from the East settling in the West only dried up in that fateful period
immediately before 1054.

In
this context, we understand of course that most modern European countries
do not correspond to the countries where most of the Orthodox saints of
the Latin world lived. To talk of France instead of Gaul, or England instead
of Britain, in the fourth century is of course an anachronism. To speak
of Portugal, Belgium and Germany in the seventh century equally absurd.
However, we take it as understood that the inclusion of the name of a
modern country or region (even when its location is well-known) is merely
meant to be an aid to the contemporary reader. By pressing 'Control' and
'F' on a keyboard and typing in a key word, any reader can obtain a listing
of, for instance, all the Orthodox saints of Sardinia. The same technique
would also allow a reader to establish a listing of the Latin saints for
any particular day in the Church's Year.

We
can distinguish three types of Latin saints, categorised by their Lives
or absence of them.

Firstly,
there are those for whom we have no Life. These include many of the Celtic
saints and early martyrs and bishops of Gaul (France) and Italy. Many
lived in pre-literate societies, where there was nobody to write their
Life. Alternatively, many early martyrs and bishops were honoured as saints,
but again nobody was able to write down their Lives, for the witnesses
of their martyrdoms were themselves martyred. Often, the reader will find
entries like 'Martyrs in Rome', or 'A holy woman in Cornwall' or 'An early
Bishop of Verona in Italy'. Often this means that we know no more about
that saint than the facts given here. It means that the saint existed,
but that the pre-literate societies in which they lived managed only to
guard their names, where they lived, the centuries when they lived and
their feast-days.

Secondly,
there are those saints, similar to the first, but whose Lives were written
many hundreds of years after they lived, in the forms of medieval romances.
Frankly, most of this hagiography has to be rejected as pure invention
- that was the error of medieval Catholicism. This does not mean that
we reject the existence of the saint, that the saint's intercession cannot
be sought in prayer - that was the error of modern Catholicism. Rather,
all this merely means that we reject the efforts of a medieval fiction-writer
to bestow on a saint who lived perhaps 700 years before, a Life. Instead,
we guard the real facts, however meagre, of the real Life of the real
saint.

Finally,
there are those saints about whom we have detailed and factual Lives.
For example the Acta of many of the early martyrs survive intact and are
very edifying and very moving. We can think of the Acts of St Perpetua
and Felicity and Companions as an example. Later, many early saints had
a disciple who wrote down Lives almost immediately after the repose of
their spiritual fathers. St Cuthbert and St Guthlac are good examples
from England. Here the reader who wishes to know more is invited to do
further research and reading. Unfortunately, in our position as pioneers
in poverty, we are unable to do this. Perhaps the new Hagiographical Institute
in Moscow will in future years be able to see to the editing and publication
of Volumes of Lives of the Latin Orthodox Saints. The recent 2003 Conference
in Moscow on the Pre-Schism Western Saints bodes well for this.

CONCLUSION

At
this point, we would like to express our thanks to two Orthodox friends
who have recently worked very hard on this project: our webmaster David
Davies and our great helper Eadmund Dunstall. Without their help, this
project would never have seen the light of day on the Internet. As regards
a printed form, we have patiently been awaiting a wealthy sponsor since
1975!

It
remains for me to state the obvious. This project is not complete. And
it never will be. We have never had the intention of providing a listing
of all the saints of the Latin West. They are known to God alone. Here
we provide some 10,000 entries, either for individuals or else for groups,
more or less numerous, of Saints. But we can hope and pray:

We
can hope that at the Last Judgement, through the prayers of all the saints,
we shall be forgiven our sins, and then in eternity come to know the saints
of God, not 'in a mirror darkly, but face to face'.

And
we can pray all the more ardently on All Saints Sunday and ask those who
have not been included here for their revelation to us.

Hope
and prayer have alone allowed to live to this day.

AFTERWORD

At
the dawn of 2004 and a new Europe, we are putting forward an Alternative
Europe and an Alternative Constitution for that Europe. Our Europe is
not that of corrupt power elites and their politico-business mafias, but
a Europe of Spiritual Unity in the Saints of God. The Constitution of
the Saints of Latin Orthodoxy is a Constitution of the grassroots, a Latin
Europe in communion with all that is best in herself. And as it is a Europe
in communion with her Age of Saints of the First Millennium, it is also
therefore a Europe once more in communion with the rest of the Orthodox
Church, as of old.

The
choice before us is now clear:

A
Secular Europe, divorced from God, built on the failed thousand-year experiment
of the fallen humanist ruins of Catholicism/Protestantism, in communion
with the rest of modern secularism.

An
Orthodox Europe, partaking of the Holy Trinity, renewed on the holy two-thousand
year reality of the risen spiritual heritage of the Saints of Latin Orthodoxy,
in communion with the rest of the Orthodox Church.